Friday Morning Will Offer Best View Of Halley's Comet

March 19, 1986|By Los Angeles Times

PASADENA, CALIF. — The end of this week will be the ''last chance of the best period'' for viewing Halley's comet in the early morning sky.

By Sunday morning, the moon will illuminate the sky so much that the comet will be nearly impossible to find, according to Stephen Edberg, an astronomer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, who also is coordinator for amateur observations for the International Halley Watch.

''Friday morning will be the best time,'' Edberg said. ''Saturday will still be good, but Sunday is out.''

Edberg said that the best viewing time will be between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., from any darkened area that offers an unobstructed view of the southern horizon.

''It's easy to find it with the naked eye,'' Edberg said. ''It's distinctly fuzzy, so it doesn't look at all like a star, and it has a tail. Anybody ought to be able to see it.''

At 4:30 a.m., the comet's position above the southern horizon should be about the width of a fist, held at arms length, he said.

Halley's rounded the sun Feb. 9 and is on its way back to the outer reaches of the solar system. It will pass the Earth closer on its outbound leg than it did coming in, and it will be only 39 million miles from the Earth on April 11. Even that is not very close, however, compared with some past visits by Halley's, and it will be very hard to see at that time from the Northern Hemisphere.

The moon will so illuminate the sky after this weekend that it will be virtually impossible to find the comet until around April 1, when it will again be visible but even lower in the sky.